The largest political party in America is the None of the Above Party, which garners more support than either the Democrats or the Republicans: that means that motivating eligible voters to go to the polls matters more than anything else when it comes to determining the outcome of federal elections. Read the rest

Until recently, Jackie Fielder was living in her van. At 25, the Stanford sociology grad couldn't afford rent in San Francisco. Read the rest

The whistleblowers who brought us The Paradise Papers and The Panama Papers risked their freedom and even their lives (Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated for reporting on the stories). Years later, financial secrecy havens are still on the rise, and it's easy to think that all that blood and treasure thrown at ending money laundering and corruption was wasted. Read the rest

In 2000, Mayor Pete won the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage Essay Contest with an excellent essay praising Bernie Sanders as a unique American politician, whom Buttigieg described as "a powerful force for conciliation and bipartisanship on Capitol Hill" who provides "an answer to those who say American young people see politics as a cesspool of corruption, beyond redemption." Read the rest

The Bernie Blackout is a well-documented phenomenon: the press cover Bernie (far) less than other frontrunners, and when they do, they're (far) more negative than they are with other frontrunners. Read the rest

Reps Anna Eshoo [D-CA] and Zoe Lofgren [D-CA] have introduced HR 4978, the "Online Privacy Act," which is a comprehensive set of federal rules for privacy, interoperability, and protection from algorithmic discrimination and manipulation. Read the rest

Sure, the Demopublican Centrist Michael Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on his presidential bid, but the former mayor has a lot more money: $52 billion. Read the rest

Here's a spicy take! South Bend, Indiana Mayor and would-be Democratic presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg told CBS that he was "troubled" that Obama extended clemency to the whistleblower Chelsea Manning, freeing her from the prison where she had been tortured and incarcerated for upholding her oath to defend the Constitution by revealing evidence of US war crimes. Read the rest

The Maine Democratic Party has teamed up with the progressive sticker-and-more company Bumperactive (previously) to produce a line of Stephen King-themed, anti-Susan Collins merch, with proceeds going to unseat the Republican Senator whose repeated acts of cowardice (especially during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings) demonstrated that she had no commitment to either her stated principles or the people of Maine. There are four graphics in all: "Trump as Pennywise the Clown, Susan Collins in 'Debt Sematary', Susan as Jack Nicholson from The Shining, and of course, Stand By ME," available as tees ($30), posters ($25 or $45 for four) and vinyl stickers ($4 for 2 or all four for $15). Read the rest

The "pay-for game" is that gotcha game that Conservatives like to play, wherein the ridiculous boondoggles favored by the right (billions for Trump's wall, more than a trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy, massive increases in Pentagon and intelligence agency spending, even a $16 million bomb used for no military reason) can be financed with infinite amounts of deficit spending, while any program that benefits the majority of America needs has to be "fully funded," generally by making cuts in other programs that benefit the majority of America -- something that the idiotic Democratic establishment has bought into. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren has released a characteristically detailed campaign plan to counter white nationalist violence in the USA, whose multi-pronged approach includes directing the DoJ to be more vigorous in pursuing white nationalist groups (and to lay off the Cointelpro-style surveillance of groups that advocate for protections for racialized people); centralized data collection on white nationalist violence; FBI assistance in local investigations of white nationalist groups; global collaboration to disrupt international white terrorist organizations; purges of Nazis in the US military; using background checks to deny firearms to members and supporters of violent white nationalist groups; reforming school curriculum to head off white nationalist trends; creating an interagency task-force to combat white nationalism; and to "combat violent extremist content on the Internet in a manner consistent with freedom of expression" (a neat trick if she can manage it). Read the rest

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is campaigning with Bernie Sanders in Iowa, generally considered a conservative, red-state kind of place -- so much so that Iowa GOP operators made a series of public predictions that she would be laughed out of the state. The state party chairman Jeff Kaufmann called her "Doctor Ocasio-Cortez" and Sanders "Crazy Bernie": "She’s got a problem with our cows here!" while Iowa Senator Joni Ernst predicted that the pair would be booed offstage. Read the rest

In 2017, Juli Briskman flipped off Trump's motorcade as she cycled past it near her northern Virginia home, and her employer, Akima LCC, fired her. Read the rest

Meaghan Winter is the author of All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States, a new book that analyzes how Democrats lost control of the vast majority of US state legislatures and governorships, why this is a crisis, and what to do about it next. Read the rest

If you leave a senior US government position, Elizabeth Warren wants you to wait at least four years before taking a job at a "market dominant" company -- any company with a $150b (or larger) market cap, or that controls "the product or labor supply in their industry." Read the rest

Rep Rashida Tlaib [D-MI] has joined Reps Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar in endorsing Bernie Sanders' bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren fumbled at the latest Democratic leadership debate when she was pressed on the question of whether Medicare for All would raise taxes, and she refused to answer, creating a soundbite that made her look like a sneaky, evasive politician, to the delight of right wingers who've struggled with her image as a straight-shooting, super-competent, quick-witted daughter of the soil. Read the rest